


doppelgänger

by cosmoscorpse



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Unreliable Narrator, void magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 19:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9286058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmoscorpse/pseuds/cosmoscorpse
Summary: She flinches, her hand clenching around the handle of the blade. Sokolov turn to her, the pot forgotten. “What?” she asks, her voice a hoarse creaking come out of her throat.“Emily,” Sokolov says, his tone heavy with –something– concern? Perhaps. “You look terrible.”She blinks at that – opens her mouth to say something sharp back (you’re one to talk, old man) –What comes out instead is a hiss of air, and, “I think I’ve been sleepwalking.”





	

Sleep drifts just past her grasp, like smoke in a room. Most nights like this one (becoming a more common occurrence than she cares to admit) she will sit on her cot for hours, either reading by candlelight or listening to the hum of the ship at her back, as she is now. A history of Karnaca; small, leather-bound and stolen from an apartment sits neglected at her side. 

She tilts her head back, lets her eyes slip shut.

Something shifts.

“Why do you keep the mirror covered?” a voice echoes. She does not open her eyes – knows well enough by the sea-chill that’s seeping into her skin where she is. Who she's with.

She does not answer him. He must know how she feels like a stranger to herself nowadays. That the backs of her hands have become foreign to her.

“You Marked my father, too,” she says instead. Not a question. Not entirely.

“Yes,” he answers anyway, and she can hear the feral-sharp smile in his voice, “But his abilities were not like yours. My Mark acts as a conduit – it provides insight as to who you are. Who you could be. It is a _reflection_ , of sorts.”

He taps his fingers against something. Glass – the mirror, then. She can practically hear him laughing, the black-eyed bastard. She swallows, draws her knees up to her chest.

“Oh,” she says.

“You haven’t answered my question, Empress,” he says, “Tell me – why aren’t you sleeping?”

Quick as it came the chill recedes. Emily shivers and opens her eyes to see only her cabin. The darkness is only darkness. The candle on the floor next to her cot snuffed out and curling smoke up to the ceiling.

The mirror in the corner is uncovered. She picks the cloth up from the floor and tosses it over the surface, her heart curdling in her throat. She considers the bed, the rumpled sheets and pillows, for only a moment.

She goes up to the deck instead, and watches the stars and the lights on the dockyards flicker until the sun brightens the horizon.

 

It is not a perfect duplicate.

But – it is very close, and there are times that Emily looks at it and wonder if the discrepancies are truly there. If they are not imagined, the byproduct of seeing herself as not through a mirror or a court portrait but as herself. Flesh, or the facsimile of flesh, stood tall before her. Close enough to touch.

It does not speak while she paces in front of it, and she would think it voiceless if she had not heard one scream when a guardsman ran it through on a short sword, before it turned to smoke.

It had been her own voice that was pulled from the mechanism of its throat – pained, and half feral, but still her own.

It blinks and shifts a little under the weight of Emily’s scrutiny, as if it is self-conscious.

Emily wonders, not for the first time, what it is that goes on in its head. If it is even capable of thought.

She wonders if its skin is cool to the touch, and callused and scarred in the same places as her own. Whether it has veins that pulse with warm blood, and if it can taste the salt on the air, same as she.

How deep the illusion goes.

She swallows hard and reaches out. The doppelganger blinks again, and dissolves into smoke and cool shadow just as Emily’s fingertips brush the cloth of its coat.

The Mark aches all down through the meat and sinew and bone of her hand.

 

The Dreadful Wale creaks and groans around her, settling on the waves. There is the purr of the engines in the walls, humming underneath her hand. Emily moves through the hall, silent in the dark, her footsteps light. Mindful of the late hour and those sleeping.

She goes up to the deck, letting the Mark’s power slip up her spine and into her eyes. She watches sounds echo out from their origins – rats skitter across the planks and fish turn gracefully in the sea below. There is Sokolov, unmoving in his bunk; and there is Hypatia, equally still. Meagan is up on the deck, sitting on a crate with her knees drawn up to her chest. She looks out over the water to the city, where lights still glow and will glow until dawn. Karnaca’s sleep is only ever fitful.

Meagan spares her a glance when she comes to sit on the rail beside her – a hint of a smile curves at the woman’s mouth.

“What time is it?” she asks, her voice dim and muffled by the hour.

Emily clenches and unclenches her left hand against the hull of the ship. The Mark aches, and she lets its power slip out of her eyes, back down her spine and into the palm of her hand. “Almost three,” she says. Her voice is too loud, she thinks, and she feels more than half-blind with only her eyes under the dark, expansive sky.

Meagan exhales softly and stretches: reaching up, and up, and up with her remaining hand. She yawns, wide and loud and crackling.

“I’ll make coffee,” she says.

 

She shivers and opens her eyes to see only her cabin. The darkness is only darkness, and the shadows are only shadows; and she is only herself, still addled by restless sleep, tangled in the blankets on her cot. The mirror in the corner is uncovered, and she can taste salt on the back of her tongue.

She sits up slowly - her hand straying to her throat, half-expecting to find steel embedded there, finding only bare skin. Her pulse races under her fingertips.

Of course - it wasn't her who -

She is only herself.

 

“ _Emily_ ,” Sokolov grunts from the galley, “Don’t skulk around in the shadows. Come, help me cut the carrots.”

She goes, stepping into the warm heat of the room and picking up a little knife. Sokolov does not seem to mind that she is quiet – only that she helps. She is grateful for his chatter.

“– Meagan and Alexandria took the skiff, although I am sure you noticed that. They should be back before sundown, and with more brandy and figs, hopefully. I did put that on her list,” he mutters, stirring at the pot on the stove, squinting through the steam, “And how are those carrots coming along, young lady? Meagan did say to dice them _finely_ , but I am sure as long as they are small enough she won’t notice nor mind – _oh!_ ”

She flinches, her hand clenching around the handle of the blade. Sokolov turn to her, the pot forgotten. “What?” she asks, her voice a hoarse creaking come out of her throat.

“Emily,” Sokolov says, his tone heavy with – _something_ – concern? Perhaps. “You look terrible.”

She blinks at that – opens her mouth to say something sharp back ( _you’re one to talk, old man_ ) –

What comes out instead is a hiss of air, and, “I think I’ve been sleepwalking.”

 

The officer gets behind it; brings his sword up, and he brings his sword down. The blow cleaves the shade from shoulder to hip - there is no blood. Still it screams, stumbles, and then dissolves. 

Above, Emily slips past, unnoticed.

 

She is kneeling at a shrine, secreted away in some attic room – sealed up and forgotten. The purple cloth heavier with dust than finery, the bones held tight in her grip. Her stomach is a roiling terror under her ribs, the Mark pulsing in time with her heart (and the other one). Her throat is dry.

She presses her fingers tighter to the bone, searching for give, or answers.

He makes no appearance – though she wonders if perhaps the rune is colder, _damper,_ than it ought to be.

“Is it,” she swallows, closing her eyes against the flare of the Mark, “Is it supposed to _hurt_?”

She feels eyes on the back of her neck.

 

The Wale’s engines turn and turn and turn, humming their own tune in time with the true whales in the belly of the sea. She moves quiet through the halls, mindful of those sleeping, and carrying no light. She sees well enough in the shadows besides.

She goes up to the deck. It’s a spilled-ink night sky, dark and heavy, and the stars are singing. She stands at the railing and breathes in the cool air coming up off the sea, her hands loose at her side.

The door opens and shuts behind her. She turns her head – it’s Meagan that comes to stand beside her, a tall beaten tin pot and two chipped mugs held carefully in her hand. She sets them down on a crate and rubs at her eyes with her hand.

“Hey,” Meagan says, her voice rough, “Can’t sleep?”

Emily casts her eyes up, picking constellations out of the black. She shrugs. Meagan snorts, soft and quick.

“Makes two of us,” she says, “I kinda figured this would happen. Brought coffee. You want some?”

Emily breathes in again – a long inhale that fills her lungs to bursting. She nods, and Meagan hums. She hears the mugs clink. Liquid pouring. Meagan hands her a cup.

It’s warm in her hands. Fills her up to aching.

 

She catches sight of herself in a mirror, once. In an old apartment in Batista. The white cloth covering all the other furniture had fallen from its silver surface.

Her face had been thinner and paler than she had remembered.

Her eyes darker.

 

The Mark is aching – a sweet-sharp tug on her bones that sings of magic. She moves low and silent up through the stairwell, and the void hums through her eyes of the man pacing in the room above. Another man in the room beside him, and the letter that she needs in the drawer of the desk that he leans on.

She will need to be quick, or she will need to –

The Mark pulses sharp and hot through her skin – she flinches.

And she is distracted by it, and she does not see the man rounding the corner to face her until he is there.

She freezes. He freezes, backlit by watery sunlight spilling in through the window behind him, his hands hovering up by the lapels of his black coat. He is colored strange by the void in her eyes and she thinks that she should do something

And, her sword feels clumsy in her hand – her body unwilling.

The man shouts – she hears it as if she is underwater, and only half-present. The Mark pulses only once more and then the magic spills out of her; leaving her bare and blinded in the stairwell. He pulls a blade from a pocket inside his coat. He takes a long, sudden stride toward her, and she takes a step back.

Past the man and his raised knife she sees a flicker of movement; a shadow in the window. A slim hand raised and pressed against the glass and dark eyes staring wide, bearing witness.

 

The face is her own.

**Author's Note:**

> cross-posted on [seaborgois](http://seaborgois.tumblr.com), where i live and sometimes shout abt these things before theyre done


End file.
